Crossover grading

[benjulmag]

The facts I am positing my question on are :

1. Company B has a stated policy of crossing over slabbed cards from company A that meet company B's criteria. If we are talking about Company A being SGC and Company B being PSA, unless things have changed, PSA will cross over SGC cards if they meet PSA's criteria.

2. It can be proven that the reason the cards will not be crossed over is some unstated rule that PSA wants to put SGC out of business and in furtherance of that end they will not cross over SGC cards.

3. The reason PSA gives in returning the cards not crossed over is that they do not satisfy PSA's criteria.

4. SGC loses a lot of customers and suffers significant damages.

5. In time PSA becomes the only remaining TPG in the hobby.


Under those facts (which let's assume can be proven), Peter, are you saying SGC has no actionable claim against PSA, and also that this has nothing to do with antitrust law?

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by benjulmag

The facts I am positing my question on are :

1. Company B has a stated policy of crossing over slabbed cards from company A that meet company B's criteria. If we are talking about Company A being SGC and Company B being PSA, unless things have changed, PSA will cross over SGC cards if they meet PSA's criteria.

2. It can be proven that the reason the cards will not be crossed over is some unstated rule that PSA wants to put SGC out of business and in furtherance of that end they will not cross over SGC cards.

3. The reason PSA gives in returning the cards not crossed over is that they do not satisfy PSA's criteria.

4. SGC loses a lot of customers and suffers significant damages.

5. In time PSA becomes the only remaining TPG in the hobby.


Under those facts (which let's assume can be proven), Peter, are you saying SGC has no actionable claim against PSA, and also that this has nothing to do with antitrust law?

There are so many issues with the hypothetical it's hard to accept it, the biggest one being that one company's refusal to take another's cards OFF the market (and thus leave them ON the market) somehow put that company out of business. It sounds absurd. SGC's existence depends on PSA legitimizing its product and putting its own brand on it? I mean come on. I can't even think of an analogy it seems so far-fetched. It would be, maybe, like Ford claiming GM has some obligation to endorse its cars, or that GM dealers are obligated to stock Ford parts and service Ford cars. Be that as it may, I don't think the antitrust laws would impose a duty on PSA to cross over its competitor's cards regardless of its intent. As I said, there are some narrow exceptions to the general principle that a monopolist may refuse to deal (term of art) with a competitor but I don't see one applying here.

PS the antitrust laws exist to protect and promote competition. SGC in your hypothetical should be looking to improve its product, not looking to PSA to legitimize it.

[Promethius88]

Couldn't it also be reasonably argued that because grading is subjective that the alleged "50 cards" may have been borderline when viewed in the SGC holders? I don't care if we are talking Company A, Company B, or Company C to Z.... you submit raw cards 10 different times you may get several different grades.
I just don't see that any of these "facts" are really provable.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Promethius88

Couldn't it also be reasonably argued that because grading is subjective that the alleged "50 cards" may have been borderline when viewed in the SGC holders? I don't care if we are talking Company A, Company B, or Company C to Z.... you submit raw cards 10 different times you may get several different grades.
I just don't see that any of these "facts" are really provable.

Well, in theory, you could have some former employee claim yeah we had a policy against crossovers. But my opinion, at least insofar as we are talking antitrust as Corey has suggested, is, well so what? Why do I have an obligation to the other grading company to cross over their cards to my holders? And how can that company with a straight face claim they need me to do this for their survival? That just sounds for all the world like they do, in fact, have an inferior product.

Now, whether a PSA customer has some legitimate gripe for his cards not being evaluated properly, that's a different question. But the answer to that in my opinion has nothing to do with the antitrust laws.

[JohnP0621]

I think the person who paid to cross over 50 cards is crazy. Even crazier to crack them open and pay a second time for the same 50 cards . What a joke. The TPG grading co must love these types of customers. Why not just buy the cards that are graded by the TPG that you like. They may have also put a minimum crossover grade on the submission slip that the cards did not match .

John P

[swarmee]

I think this thread was inspired by the thread on the post-war board where Buster posts late in the night.
None of the cards have ever been posted, but the three grading companies all have slightly different definitions of what a NM-MT 8 is. The biggest difference is centering: BGS is stricter than PSA who is likely stricter than SGC. One judges "natural" rough cuts while others may accept "sheet cut" cards cut after the factory production.

PSA has done some dumb things on large submissions before, rejecting approximately 100 cards in an order as ?AUTH (aka likely fake) just because the submitter sent them in toploaders that were taped at the top. That guy has a real axe to grind, because they probably charged for that service, despite not providing the guy any useful service. I know it was posted on the CU/PSA message boards, but I think that thread went poof.

[oldjudge]

My guess is that crossover submissions represent a minuscule portion of PSA total submissions. It seems that the easiest way to address the issue is to raise the fee for such service to a minimum of $100, with the fee increasing as the value of the card increases.That would effectively put an end to crossover business, ending the arb of people trying to buy lower priced SGC cards and, without cracking them out, get them into comparable PSA holders.

[benjulmag]

One of the things that has guided me well as an attorney is what I call the smell test.

If,

(I) company B is the industry leader and has a publicly stated policy of objectively evaluating all submissions explicitly including submissions of slabbed company A cards;

(II) company B as a matter of internal policy has a policy against crossing over cards in company A's slabs, which policy can be proven;

(III) company B when returning the uncrossed over cards to the submitter states the reason for the refusal to cross over is that the cards are either altered or do not merit the same grade;

(IV) these occurrences occur on a regular basis;

(V) company A's profitability goes down, which decrease can be proven to correlate to company B's internal policy of refusing to objectively evaluate slabbed company A cards in crossover submittals;

Then,

company A has an actionable claim for damages against company B.

And to go further, if company B can be proven to have similar policies with similar results against all the other TPG companies in the market, such that that the end result is company B is left as the only TPG company in the industry,

Then

there are antitrust implications.


Let me worry about whether what I state to be fact can be proven. Assuming they can, I believe the conclusions I have drawn stand a very good chance of being correct if tested.